Monday, February 24, 2014

Federal Fly Swatters: Pit Bulls vs. Poodles

It
may come as a surprise to many, but the Library
of Congress has its own SWAT team, 85 bodies strong. Learning this elicited
a chuckle from me and a recollection of a classic Seinfeld shtick: the Library Cop. It otherwise
isn't a laughing matter. A Library of Congress SWAT force showing up outside
your door, to paraphrase Mr. Bookman's closing line, would be worse than a pit
bull sicced on a poodle.

That's
because the federal government regards all non-federal employees as poodles to
harass, throw down to the floor, cuff, arrest, and cart off to an unknown
future or even fate. And if you resist, you will be shot. If you successfully
resist by shooting, in legitimate retaliation against the initiation of force
against you, one or more members of a federal SWAT force, and survive the
ensuing fusillade, you will be charged with assault or murder. Your home or
office will be ransacked. Your computer and private papers will be confiscated,
likely never returned, and if returned, then damaged. Damages to your property
will not be compensated. No one on the SWAT team will be charged with anything,
except perhaps poor marksmanship or maybe using foul language. More likely
promotions in grade and pay will be in line.

If
you're lucky, and the authorities admit a mistaken identity, or find no
evidence of what they were searching for – with or without a search or arrest
warrant – you may sue, and incur the costs and stress of fighting a government
that has unlimited financial resources to fight back in court.

This
is the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) at work. Not for you. But against
you. You're paying for it.

The
federal government can boast of at least seventy agencies with armed officers
on their payrolls, who can be cobbled together to form a single SWAT team or in
alliance with other
federal and local law enforcement agencies. The Department of Justice has a
16-page report that
details all federal agencies that have their own little troops of armed
officers, including the Library of Congress, the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department
of Education, and etc. Surprisingly, the only significant agency that does
not arm its employees is the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), but it isn't
for lack of interest. The TSA wants travelers to see those gun holsters at
every checkpoint.

Over
the years, the federal government has incrementally militarized state and local
law enforcement agencies, often to the point that cities and small towns have
acquired armored personnel carriers and military style devices such as ramrods
and "flash-bang" or "stun" grenades. This was done either under
pressure from the federal government, or the non-federal agencies decided that they
needed to "get with the game," and arm themselves to the teeth as
much as their local budgets would allow (along with subsidies from the federal
government). Fox News reported on a dubious
federal raid last September on a gold mining town in Alaska:

A task force including members of
10 state and federal law enforcement agencies descended on a gold mine in the
tiny town of Chicken (pop. 17) last month, in what locals described as a raid.

“Imagine coming up to your
diggings, only to see agents swarming over it like ants, wearing full body
armor, with jackets that say "POLICE" emblazoned on them, and all
packing side arms,” gold miner C.R. Hammond told the Alaska Dispatch. “How
would you have felt? You would be wondering, ‘My God, what have I done now?”

A spokesman for the federal
Environmental Protection Agency did not deny that agents wore body armor and
carried guns, but said it was not a "raid."

"The ongoing investigation
conducted by the AK Environmental Crimes Task Force -- consisting of EPA, ADEC,
USFWS, ADFG, BLM, Coast Guard, FBI, Alaska State Troopers, NOAA, & US Park
Service -- did not result in a raid," the statement read. "The Task
Force members involved in the investigation during the week of August 19, 2013,
were EPA's Criminal Investigation Division & Bureau of Land Management's
Office of Law Enforcement & Security, in cooperation with ADEC's
Environmental Crimes Unit."

The investigation was into
possible violations of the Clean Water Act, according to the EPA. The officers
were part of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force and visited the outpost
near the Canadian border during the third week of August to investigate water
discharges into rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.

It's
a raid if a dozen armed law enforcement personnel suddenly show up and swarm
over your property, ransack your belongings, and ask questions – and all you've
done is mind your own business. The Alaska raid was basically a
"fishing" expedition, looking for reasons to justify the initiation
of force.

But
then the Obama promise to "transform America" includes on its agenda making
your business the government's business, and to the point that you no longer
have a business.

The
American Revolution occurred in large part over the stationing of British
troops in the colonies to better "police" the colonials in taxation
and mercantilist regulation, and to prevent them from escaping British
"protection" by migrating West over the Alleghany Mountains. Special
Admiralty courts were established to deal with smugglers and violators of the
Crown's mercantile regulations. Crown-appointed governors in turn appointed
compliant judges to the colonial judiciary to uphold Crown laws. The Crown
instituted warrantless searches and seizures. This was a policy proposed by
Crown wonks even before repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, advocated for a decade
by subministers with little else to do but concoct ways to milk and subdue the
colonies and to pass on their "white papers" to their superiors and
cronies in Parliament receptive to their ideas.

Lexington
and Concord could be seen as a SWAT team raid by British troops to find and destroy
colonial arms supplies, and Bunker Hill as an assault on the Tea Party. Is the U.S.
headed for a repeat of those confrontations? Wisdom says yes, if there's any
gumption left in Americans after being brainwashed in government schools, by
the news media, and by Hollywood.

After
all, the behavior of federal and local law enforcement agencies too much is the
hallmark of a military operation directed against a population declared the
enemy.

But
who is the real enemy? Islamic jihadists? Someone growing marijuana in his
basement for personal use? Someone whose husband had traffic ticket ten years
ago? Someone who dared question a politician's motive for harassing him?

Over the last 25 years, America
has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along
with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units
(most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police
work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants,
usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent
raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent
drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of
having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily
armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

Accompanying
the paper is a remarkable, up-to-date (to 2011) interactive map of the U.S. that is
virtually buried under pinpoints of botched SWAT raids. Each clickable pinpoint
activates a balloon that explains the event. Apparently the map is regularly
updated to include the most current incidents of SWAT raids.

.

What
has brought America to a state in which this scenario has actually been carried
out so many times and with fatal consequences? It didn't begin with the
establishment of the post- 9/11, Bush-conceived, but German-sounding
"Homeland Security," the umbrella agency that oversees all federal,
state and local law enforcement entities in the country. Prohibition era raids
by T-men and G-men were just as arbitrary and ruthless. "Homeland
Security" has an inescapable totalitarian ring to it, and I doubt that
ring was lost on whoever put the agency together and picked the name.

This
is a logical consequence of a politics that diminishes freedom as government
powers expand over as broad a range of human action as it can get away with.
SWAT teams – with the body armor, the bug-eye sunglasses, the visors, the
high-powered weaponry, the fancy, high-tech accouterments, the riot gear, and
the anonymity of the beings in that array – are intended to restrain or
intimidate or frighten the "liberal" (in the old, freedom-defined
sense) elements of society into submission and obedience, as well as anyone
else who has been psychologically subdued by "authority." Remember that
the grenadiers of European armies, including the British, were chosen for their
extraordinary height, which in turn was exaggerated by their tall bearskin busbies.

The
psychologically subdued may resent the ever-present threat embodied in the
"men in black," but they will never revolt and will never pose a
threat to the state or question its authority. The burden of that
non-intimidation will be up to us Bunker Hill types. Remember also that about one-third
of the American population during the Revolution was "neutral," and
the other third Loyalist.

The
ongoing, never-ending "war on terror" – which we are losing – is
partly responsible for the ubiquity of militarized law enforcement. The country
is in a permanent state of siege – or lock-down, if you will – because the
government refuses to acknowledge an enemy dedicated to subverting and
destroying the country: Islam. It is not beyond belief to assume that one of
the reasons the government refuses to acknowledge the actual enemy is because
it has a vested interest in imposing the kinds of controls it considered
expedient to establish to "combat" Islam. Combating a non-enemy
requiring a police state is simply an excuse to perpetuate the controls, the
surveillance, the TSA groping, the campaign against guns, and waging a war
against freedom of speech in the names of "tolerance,"
"diversity," and "fairness." The government has also taken
upon itself the powers to combat "social ills" and to enforce
"social justice." These "ills" include marijuana and drug usage,
prostitution, money laundering of funds derived from "illegal" businesses
made illegal by fiat law, and manufacturing goods with materials not approved
by the government – for beginners.

It
is interesting to note that while the federal government and its state and
local law enforcement allies prepare for a raid armed and equipped like
soldiers, I am not aware of these SWAT units ever taking on any one of the
dozens of Islamic "retreats" that are actually jihadi training camps in the wilds, such as Islamberg
in New York or in some
36 such places in across the
country, from New York to Oregon. Spokesmen for the SWAT armies explain
that the agencies must be prepared for urban and rural warfare against terrorists.
But, what terrorist groups have been assaulted by these SWAT teams in the U.S.?

Instead
of a news story of a knock-down, drag-out battle between Islamist terrorists in
training and our combat-ready SWAT teams, we get to read stories like this one,
from Pamela
Geller's Atlas Shrugs site:

The jihad terror-trainings
compounds in the U.S., a news story I
first broke back in 2007, are growing. And now I have obtained exclusive
information showing that one of them has placed members on local police forces,
ensuring that nothing is done to stop or even monitor their activities.

PJ
Media reported, “Federal Bureau of Investigations documents detailing a
22-site network of terrorist training villages sprawled across the United
States. According to the documents, the FBI has been concerned about these
facilities for about 12 years, but cannot act against them because the U.S.
State Department has not yet declared that their umbrella group, MOA [Muslims
of the Americas]/Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

The Texas compound is called
“Mahmoudberg,” located in south Texas’ Brazoria County on County Road 3 near
the town of Sweeny, which has a population of about 4,000. Jamaat ul-Fuqra was
the jihad terrorist organization that murdered journalist Daniel Pearl – he had
gone to try to interview its leader. According to an informed source, one of
Pearl’s murderers now lives at Mahmoudberg.

What's
keeping the government from declaring Muslims of America a terrorist
organization? The intimidating charge of "Islamophobia" and the risk
of high-profile lawsuits founded on charges of racism, "hate crimes,"
religious prejudice, discrimination, etc. – all the victimhood fallbacks of an
ideology determined to make America bow to Mecca, which it has done numerous times
over the last thirty or more years.

Another
thing that is stopping the government from declaring the group a terrorist organization
is a policy-driven, copasetic feeling for the group. To the feds, we're just
poodles, ready to push around; to Muslims, we're just kaffirs, ready to be
conquered or killed, using the same armament. Is there a difference in approach
between our government and Islamic terrorists? Nothing fundamental.

So,
if Muslims connected to bona fide terrorist organizations can be hired by American
police forces, where do we go from there?

More
Americans should see themselves as Dobermans, not as poodles or even Fox
Terriers. There is hope for the country, as reported by USA
TODAY's February 23rd story, "Americans rising up against government."
Writer Glenn Reynolds wrote:

America's ruling class has been
experiencing more pushback than usual lately. It just might be a harbinger of
things to come.

First, in response to widespread
protests last week, the Department of Homeland Security canceled
plans to build a nationwide license plate database. Many local
police departments already use license-plate readers that track every car
as it passes traffic signals or pole-mounted cameras. Specially equipped police
cars even track cars parked on the street or even in driveways.

The DHS put
out a bid request for a system that would have gone national, letting the
federal government track millions of people's comings and goings just as it
tracks data about every phone call we make. But the proposal was suddenly withdrawn
last week, with the unconvincing explanation that it was all a mistake.

On Friday, after more public
outrage, the Federal
Communications Commission withdrew a plan to "monitor" news
coverage at not only broadcast stations, but also at print publications that
the FCC has no authority to regulate. The "Multi-Market Study of Critical
Information Needs," or CIN (pronounced
"sin") involved the FCC sending people to question reporters and
editors about why they chose to run particular stories. Many folks
in and out of the media found it Orwellian….

Though people have taken to the
streets from Egypt,
to Ukraine,
to Venezuela
to Thailand,
many have wondered whether Americans would ever resist the increasing
encroachments on their freedom. I think they've begun.

Poodles,
indeed. Or is it a case of the bully pit bull being what he's always been: a
coward? Time will tell.

2 comments:

I've said it before so I'll say it again: there are Hitler and Stalin wannabes out there in society taking notes on what the Democratic Party can and cannot get away with. They're also noting the utter absence of Republican resistance.